Hawaii's coffee industry today is spread throughout the islands.
The Big Island of Hawaii is well known for Hawaii's celebrated
Kona Coffee. Kona is known world-wide as a fine quality arabica
which produces a highly regarded gourmet brew and commands a premium price.
Within the past few years coffee has been tested and grown throughout the islands with
a major plantation here on Kauai known as Island Coffee Co. The bean is also grown
in Kaanapali-Maui, Wailua-Oahu, and on the Friendly Isle of Molokai. Through
most of coffees history, however, the industry has been subject to the vagaries of the
world price for ordinary commercial coffees. Therefore, the enterprise has seen boom and
bust many times and has lived frequently at the edge of survival. With the popularity of
Specialty Coffee within the last 6 years, coffee prices around the world have jumped up by
about 75%. Coffee has become one of the future crops of Hawaii.
The Beginning of Coffee in Hawaii (1813-1920)
Don Francisco de Paula Marin, the storied Manini, recorded in his journal in 1813 that he had planted
coffee on Oahu. That planting apparently failed, but in 1825 Governor Boki commissioned a
successful planting in Manoa Valley. Soon coffee cultivation had been introduced to all
the islands. A number of coffee species were tried here. A Guatemalan strain, which
has since proved the most popular, was introduced in 1892. The large plantation approach
to growing the crop, first attempted on Kauai in 1836, eventually failed. There
were problems of labor supply and blight in addition to those of fluctuating price. Many
areas put to coffee were changed to sugar lands as the sugar industry prospered. By the
turn of the century coffee growing was regarded as a small farm endeavor, and by 1920
virtually all of the commercially-grown coffee was in Kona.
Hawaiian Coffee's Rich Social History
The industry has a rich social history with participation by members of all the Islands' major ethnic groups.
For several years after the overthrow of the Monarchy, Hawaii's government offered coffee
lands in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to draw Occidental farmers as settlers.
The plantation culture of coffee in Hawaii was dominated by Caucasian landholders.
As it faltered, landowners in Kona divided their property into five-acre plots and took
on tenants. Most of these were Japanese who had been plantation employees. The Japanese
family coffee farmers of Kona have attracted extensive sociological study. Their predominance
in coffee growing has lasted into a third generation.
Since the 1830's, Hawaii's successive governments have tried to encourage the growth of
the industry. Early efforts involved
acceptance of coffee as tax-payment tender, exemption from tariffs on imported mill equipment,
tariff protection for local coffee, provision of public lands for lease, and land tax vacations.
Later support has included farm loans, protection from imported disease, technical assistance
to farmers and processors by the University's Cooperative Extension Service, technical and market research by
its Agricultural Experiment Station, the institution of grading and labeling standards, and marketing
promotion by the Department of Agriculture.
Boom and Bust in the 1950s
A significant boom period for Kona's coffee occurred in the mid-1950's. World coffee prices
were up and Kona farmer's yield per acre astonished the world. The University Extension Service
encouraged farmers to reestablish coffee-growing thoughout the Territory. Coffee Schools
were held. These were one-day to one-week meetings at which farmers, processors, extension
agents, researchers, and government officials exchanged information. A coffee mill was
consturcted in Hilo. Then the world price dropped, ushering in a period when the industry's
demise was increasingly predicted. American Factors, Ltd., and Dillingham Investment Corp.
sold their mills in 1961. The milling cooperatives which had formed in the fifties persevered,
hoping and working for better days.
Today's Hawaiian Coffee - Rich in History and Flavor
The last twenty years have brought important changes. International commodity agreements
have helped to prevent extreme variations in coffee prices. Kona's coffee, previously used
outside Hawaii primarily for blending, has since 1970 been successfully marketed domestically
and abroad as a specialty item bringing generally increasing prices. Thus the cultivation of
coffee has remained viable, if not always profitable, even in the face of increased land values.
The processing segment of the industry has passed through a period of consolidation, with mergers
and buy-outs significantly reducing the number of local cooperatives. Most coffee farmers have
other jobs and operate their farms on a part-time basis. The acreage devoted to coffee, after
declining greatly since 1959, has recently begun to increase. Several new processors have entered
the field in the 1980's. Despite continuing labor supply difficulties and other problems, Hawaii's
coffee industry - a century and a half old and unique in the United States - is alive and
flourishing.
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